“A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.”

It is better to have 100 functions operate on one data structure than to have 10 functions operate on 10 data structures.

We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines.

In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.

There is no such thing as a free variable.

Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress.

You’ve solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

In software systems it is often the early bird that makes the worm.

Work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle.

Programmers are not to be measured by their ingenuity and their logic but by the completeness of their case analysis.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

Every reader should ask himself periodically.

One can only display complex information in the mind.

Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.

In programming, as in everything else, to be in error is to be reborn.

In computing, turning the obvious into the useful is a living definition of the word “frustration”.

That everything around you give you its utter attention, think only of you, care only for you…every man wants to be a tyrant when he fornicates.

The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.

Stillmatic’ is the rebirth of ‘Illmatic,’ my first debut album to come out in 1994. ‘Stillmatic’ is me coming full circle in my career and with everything, and just bringing pure hip-hop back.

Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.

I listen to everything – from Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette all the way down to rap like Scarface, UGK and Lauryn Hill.

This concept must be changed; we must realize in our bones that almost everything in time and history has changed except the human being.

Chaos is impatient. It’s random. And above all it’s selfish. It tears down everything just for the sake of change, feeding on itself in constant hunger. But Chaos can also be appealing. It tempts you to believe that nothing matters except what you want.

I need not instruct you of my belief: Time gives all and takes all away ; everything changes but nothing perishes ;